[briandear]

And during those outages, the telephone generally works.

Everyone running to a conference room -- feels very Michael Scott to me -- and almost always just as unnecessary.

I wonder about those who claim face-to-face is best explain how Github and Basecamp seem to do just fine. Others point to how Yahoo eliminated remote as some kind of argument supporting same, yet I'd hardly consider Yahoo to be a good example of anything. If "good enough for Yahoo" is an argument, then count me out.

Unless you physically have to touch something, remote can always work (and even be better.) It's a question of establishing processes that work. The 'genre' of remote isn't the problem -- it's always the implementation.